Just A Game
by Amethyst Soul
Summary: Zim and Dib have been playing their most dangerous game for too long. But when the time comes for Dib to permanently end it, Zim's not ready to let go.


Just A Game  
  
The aesthetic darkness seemed to materialize around Zim as he opened his eyes for the third time that night. Disconcerting thoughts at the edge of his mind troubled him, but he refused to come to terms with them- these thoughts had haunted him tirelessly, even dutifully, almost every night; would haunt him almost every day had he not spent the entirety of daytime catching up on his sleepless nights.  
  
Zim stood up out of his bed and shoved the uncomfortably warm covers off. It then occurred to him that he was not alone.  
  
Dib, his human adversary, stared back at him unblinkingly. Neither moved. Neither made a sound. It was as if neither even realized that the other was there. If someone were to walk into the room right then, they might not even recognize the fact that two boys stood, glaring at each other from two respective places; they might just pass them off as mannequins; shadows, even; unreal figments of their imaginations.  
  
It was Zim who made the first move. He sprang to the left where a laser firearm sat off innocently on a table. Without another thought, he pointed the gun towards Dib- only to find that said human wasn't there.  
  
Panicked chest heaving, Zim calmly quieted his harsh gasps to listen for footsteps; clues as to where the ghostly figure might have gone. He heard the clue- the click of a gun- all too late as he soon found himself on the floor, knocked close to unconsciousness by the butt end of the metallic human weapon. Furiously Zim sprang up, pointing his own weapon towards where the attacker had been- and was no more.  
  
He did not let the fact that the human had the first shot irk him. He calmed his breathing and then used the sensory organs designed especially for a creature of his Irken physique to detect the predator.  
  
Without a moment's thought, Zim swung around, his balled fist meeting the contact that he never even saw. The human staggered back but did not fall, and reacted quickly and irrationally- he head butted the Irken in the stomach.  
  
Once Zim regained his own ground, the human's presence went undetected again, just as quickly as it had been found. He froze and listened again. A creak came from his left; he jerked his gun and shot. The fire-red of the laser illuminated the room for a moment to tell Zim exactly two things- one, he had shot exactly at what he had heard, a creak; two, that Dib was in the far /right/ corner.  
  
Before Zim could fix his mistake two shots rang in the air and he had to dodge his attacker's advances. He flung himself- wildly- backwards in a move that looked about as unpolished as someone who had tripped over his own two feet. As he fell he saw Dib latch onto the wall and walk about four or five steps /sideways/, ending the move in a twisted flip that would land him behind Zim.  
  
"How did he..." Zim whispered, trailing off. He spun around, angrily, "You can't DO that!"  
  
Dib grinned and raised his gun. "I can, and I did."  
  
Zim was quicker. He ducked and rolled, grabbing hold of one of Dib's heavy black boots. The human moved forward to dodge and, upon meeting the unexpected resistance from the Irken, fell forward. Zim sprang up again and hesitated; allowed the human the chance to stand as well. The hesitation was so small, so quick, that it almost went unnoticed. But the human realized it as he swung his fist forward, and stopped, inches from his rival's face.  
  
Zim gave the human a confused and awkward stare but he took it as a simple error and backed away, aiming his weapon directly at the human's forehead. He shot; Dib cocked his head; Zim missed. A mid-air kick from the human caused Zim's weapon to go flying across the room.  
  
The hand that held the weapon rose to Zim's face and he flinched, but he didn't move.  
  
"You did that on purpose," Dib sneered.  
  
"Did what?"  
  
"You /let/ the gun fly from your hands!" he accused, pressing his own weapon forward into his contender's face. "Why?"  
  
"I don't know what you're talking about," Zim protested. He glanced at the gun; judged the distance it would take to reach it so that he could drag this on a little longer.  
  
"You're lying."  
  
In his accusations, Dib made the mistake of letting his guard down. Zim took this chance to do a kick of his own. Disabling the human, he moved in a limbo under Dib's raised arm and made a dash for the gun. Dib stuck his leg out and caused Zim to fall. Zim looked up; realized he was close enough to touch the gun; reached for it- and was crushed under the towering leather boot of the human.  
  
Zim gritted his teeth but did not shriek; he merely cursed as the boot lifted off his throbbing green hand and settled on the gun instead.  
  
"You hesitated- before," Dib said casually. He forced some weight onto the gun, crushing it. "You wanted me to win."  
  
Zim froze. "What... what would make you think that?"  
  
Their words hung icily into the thick, hot air. Neither made a move.  
  
"I see it now," Dib sneered, digging his heel into the weapon, the material crumbling as though it were made of crackers. "This is all just a game! A silly, childish game of yours."  
  
"Of course!" Zim shrieked angrily, but he did not pick himself up off of the ground. "Don't you think I knew that?"  
  
Dib continued, as if he hadn't heard Zim. "A silly game. Yes. That you could put an end to."  
  
Another momentary silence. And then Zim responded: "I don't want to. And I don't have to."  
  
Dib stared hard at him. There was something lost in his eyes- a feeling, a thought, a memory. Then all of it came together. "This is tearing you apart," Dib realized. "Fiber by fiber it's destroying you. And at each end, the means you seek have yet to be justified."  
  
"...I have nothing else but this, Dib." Two red, shimmering eyes stared up at the human entity. "Ever since... then... I realized I had nothing else."  
  
"Get up," Dib sneered. "Get up and finish this. Get up and end this game! I'm sick and tired of playing it."  
  
But Zim didn't move. Tired eyes swept back towards the ground; antennae lowered and hung over where his ears should have been; weak arms pressed against the ground, allowing the rest of the body to remain sitting up.  
  
After only a moment, a cold object was nudged into Zim's gloved hand. His eyes- surprised, unsure- rose to meet Dib's.  
  
"Finish it, Zim," Dib whispered harshly. He shoved his own gun further into Zim's possession and this time the Irken grasped it; even raised it to Dib's unflinching head.  
  
A moment passed, and a sigh escaped Zim. He lowered the gun. "...this is all I have."  
  
Violently he was flung back; he felt the stinging sensation of Dib's vicious punch more than he felt the cuts on his arm from being struck against one of the tables. Metallic, pungent blood sprung from his cheek and lip.  
  
"This is some kind of test," Zim muttered, wiping his mouth. "This is a test and you're using me to... amuse yourself."  
  
"No, Zim. That's where you're wrong. I'm the entertainment here with this sick sport of yours. I only want this to be over."  
  
"It will /never/ be over."  
  
"It already is!" Dib shouted back; it was the first time Zim had seen him lose his temper. "It's over and you're the only one that can't see it is! This isn't a test. This is your /life/. That's the sad, sad part of it! This, all of this," Dib gestured to the room they were in; to Zim's entire house, but he meant the entire world. "This is all just your pathetic life."  
  
"...what else do I have?" Zim gasped as he choked up a mixture of mucus and blood, forcing himself to stand. "This is what's real to me. If I lose it... if I destroy it... then I won't have anything left."  
  
"You don't know that for sure," Dib protested stubbornly.  
  
"What do /you/ know?! You haven't been out there!" Zim pointed the gun towards the sky. "You haven't known what it was like to live, just for a day, as ZIM! Now that... everything has changed... you don't know. You aren't even capable of knowing!" a nasty glare exchanged between the two.  
  
Zim collapsed on the ground again, partly because the fight weakened him and he needed to choke up more blood; partly because the psychological fight with Dib had weakened his spirit and he needed to swallow in reality.  
  
When he had quieted, he noticed a presence close to him. Dib was kneeling not just a few inches away. Slowly, Dib took the head of the gun and pointed it towards his own chest. Zim loosened his grip on the handle of the gun but Dib used his other hand to reach out and tighten that grip.  
  
"You made me who I am, Zim. You didn't expect me to grow beyond that. And now that I've developed into something else entirely- something you didn't expect- I'm trying to tell you exactly what you've known along. It's over. You made your mistake and now you have to start anew. End it and then you can start anew- I'm the only one that's standing in your way right now."  
  
Surprised by this statement, Zim rose his head, "...w-why? Why are you doing this?"  
  
Dib smiled, knowing that he had won, now. "I told you. You made me who I am- or, who I was. And now it's time I return that favor. I want to make you into something, now. I want to give you a chance to develop into something else entirely- as I had."  
  
"I..." words tumbled out. Many words, half of them Zim didn't even register that it was he who said them. All he could remember was a jumble of incomprehensible sentences; something along the lines of, "...thank you..." and "I'll honor this, human."  
  
With his promise, Zim pulled the trigger.  
  
*  
  
"Game over," the computer roared. The virtual world melted away and became the real world again; the lab, the house, everything revealed itself as the way it should have been. Zim wasn't even sure of what time it was; then again, he wasn't sure of much of anything.  
  
He sat slumped on the ground where he had been when he pulled the trigger on the Dib-replica. For a being made of 1's and 0's and Irken technology, Dib was almost an exact duplication of the real Dib- the real Dib that had died not just two months ago.  
  
The replicated Dib was not supposed to outsmart Zim in the way that he did. But the game had been running for so long- a month straight, to be exact- that he had developed his own sentiments, thoughts, and motivations. And he sacrificed himself- though it would be crude to say that giving up a "virtual" life was much of a sacrifice- for his creator. After all, Zim could always create him again by simply playing another game.  
  
But after winning the game for the first time since it's creation, Zim was in no mood to play it again. In this multi-life game, he had always let Dib win; he himself had an infinite number of lives, while the game Dib had one- and it turned around and allowed the Irken soldier to beat it.  
  
Zim didn't know how the Dib-replica discovered that he was just that- a replica, a tool, a mere creation based on an actual human being that had once been living; nor did he know how the Dib-replica had found out how his creation came to be. But Zim presumed that the replica tapped into Zim's memory files sometime during the game, and the painful memories flooded into his virtual circuitry and caused him to develop into what Zim had just destroyed.  
  
These memories consisted of a final battle of the real-life game between the real-life Dib and Zim. Memories of Dib, falling; losing. Memories of Zim rising up for one glorious moment- a moment, that's all it was. And then a series of moments afterwards where he realized that all he had left was nothing.  
  
Zim plunged into his work- the creation of a game that would allow him to continue the childish competition against his former ally. He had never meant to win. He had meant to play the game until it killed him- to play the game until the game became his world, and he could forget the reality he had left behind. But the game outsmarted him. He may have pulled the trigger- he may have triumphed over the game- but it was the game that won.  
  
And so Zim sat, crumpled against the cold metal floor of his Irken lab, his arm outstretched, his hand poised to shoot a gun that wasn't there; he sat, a crushed gaze etched into his face, defeated.  
  
Defeated. But not destroyed. For Zim still had a promise to fulfill; a promise to an entity of his own makings.  
  
The promise /would/ be kept...  
  
END. 


End file.
